Hey JLecht,
this was actually not intentional. We agree, it looks as if you could place a thermal pad there. This would thermally couple the aluminum VRM heatsink to the aluminum front plate. Of course, this aluminum part has no contact with the liquid, as is our rule for all aluminum parts in all our products. So, doing so would increase the surface area that you could utilize for vrm cooling, but it would still be completely passive cooling.

Is there a customized HEATKILLER water block for my...GPU | Motherboard